Mt. Popocatépetl is one of the most active volcanoes in the world, and only 43 miles away from Mexico City. Approximately 25 million people live within a 60 mile radius of the crater. So when the mountain does something, everyone sits up and takes notice. On Monday night at 9:38 PM a massive explosion sent a column of volcanic ash almost a mile into the sky. The explosion was loud enough to shake doors and windows in the city of Puebla.

The mountain has been increasingly active in recent months, and authorities are currently preparing for the worse case scenarios. They have drafted a special evacuation plan for locals in case there is a more violent eruption.

Scientists say that the volcano is capable of producing a catastrophic eruption. Popocatépetl is considered the most dangerous volcano in North America in terms of explosive activity and threat to populations. The current moderate scale can switch fairly quickly to a large, catastrophic Plinian eruption, the largest and most violent of all volcanic eruptions.

Wikipedia defines a Plinian eruption (or Vesuvian eruption) as similar to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, which destroyed the ancient Roman cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii. Such eruptions are marked by columns of volcanic debris and hot gases ejected high into the stratosphere, the second layer of Earth’s atmosphere. Key characteristics are the ejection of large amounts of pumice and powerful continuous gas-driven eruptions. Short eruptions can end in less than a day, longer events can take several days or even months. The amount of magma erupted can be so large that it depletes the magma chamber below and causes the top of the volcano to collapse resulting in a caldera. A disaster that could potentially kill millions.

Popocatépetl had a dramatic effect on the ancient Aztecs. Giant mud flows covered entire Aztec cities and some were so large they buried entire pyramids in super-heated mud. We haven’t seen anything like that in modern times, the mountain had been dormant for a very long time before becoming active again in the 1990s.

Remember that our West Coast from Alaska and the Aleutians all the way down through Chilé is part of the “Ring of Fire,” with Mt. St. Helens which did erupt in 1980, Many of our other mountains are also dormant volcanoes – Mt. Rainier, Oregon’s Mt. Hood, to mention the more famous ones.

The Federalist has an excellent column: “Socialism’s Bloody History Shows Millennials Should Think Twice Before Supporting It” by Stella Morabito. It’s a political system that puts the reins of Power in the hands of just a few strongmen who end up calling all the shots. It’s a system in which suspicion nd the smell of treason tend to hang in the air. She says:

Socialism, by the way, is just such a system. This is the case whether you call it by any other name, whether communism, utopianism, or collectivism. Oh, go ahead and slap some lipstick on that pig and call it “democratic” socialism or “progressivism” or “communitarianism.”

Socialism and communism both involve ceding to the state control over the distribution of goods and services for the masses. This involves giving up individual rights, and giving the state a good measure of control over our personal lives. This road always leads to tyranny, no matter what you pave it with, and no matter what you name it.

I have a bad habit of jotting down brief notes as I read my way round the internet on a little grocery list kind of pad, and then not being able to read them because I scribbled. Most get scrapped. but I keep a few, like these:

Sept. 18, 2014 – New York Times reported that the term “assault weapons” was created by Democrats in order to build momentum to ban “a politically defined category of guns.” and I added ARLS
are responsible for less thn 2% of all gun deaths. and 4.4 shootings in schools per 100,000 students—98% not by rifles or shotguns.

If the Left is losing, it means the rules need to be changed.

Republicans “spew hate” while Democrats are “passionate”

Today, I noticed more recognition that Democrats are engaging in pure propaganda. They are having trouble dealing with, and covering up for, their new freshmen congresspersons. Afraid to condemn, can’t approve, but how much of a following do these three have?

Here’s Michael Goodwin at the New York Post: “Have the Democrats finally gone too far?

One might think that before you attempt to Re-Organize the Whole Country on wisps and idle thoughts in your first weeks in Congress, you might have consulted someone, (anyone?) who knows something about energy, in order to keep from embarrassing yourself and all the other newbies who have decided to run for president, and just signed right on. You see, you do not know what you are talking about. Yes, this informative video comes from the energy industry, but who do you suppose knows enough about energy to explain the facts?

These are the first two videos in a projected series of six videos explaining the realities of energy, from the Clear Energy Alliance. There’s a lot more that we need to know, like the wonders and usefulness of nuclear power. What about Fukushima? Don’t we have to worry about something like that? That’s why I recommend watching for the rest of the series to come.

Some wag remarked that Congressman Jerry Nadler decided to impeach President Trump on the day he won the election.

According to the Constitution, “the President, Vice President And all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors”. Since no one has been able, including Mr. Nadler, to present any evidence whatsoever of high Crimes and Misdemeanors, Mr. Nadler in now embarking on a vast search — not for the high Crimes or Misdemeanors, but for the evidence that there actually were any Crimes, etc. This would seem to my untutored non-legal mind to be a highly questionable “fishing expedition.”

“Yes, I do,” replied Mr. Nadler. “It’s very clear that the President obstructed justice. It’s very clear—1,100 times he referred to the Mueller investigation as a witch hunt, he tried to—he fired—he tried to protect [Michael] Flynn from being investigated by the FBI. He fired [FBI director Jim] Comey in order to stop the Russian thing, as he told NBC News.”

Credit Mr. Nadler for candor that Democrats didn’t display when they campaigned last year. Then they talked only about holding the President “accountable.” Now they claim they already have enough to impeach Mr. Trump, though as Mr. Nadler admitted Sunday, “you have to persuade enough of the opposition party voters, Trump voters . . . that you’re not just trying to steal the last—to reverse the results of the last election.”

That may be harder than he imagines, and not only because of Mr. Nadler’s Freudian slip there of “steal.” Based on the public evidence so far, Mr. Trump hasn’t obstructed justice in any of the examples Mr. Nadler cited. Mr. Nadler wants to turn the President’s exercise of his normal constitutional powers into impeachable offenses.

The Wall Street Journal goes on to cite the opinions of such legal heavyweights as former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, David Rivkin, and Attorney General William Barr while he was still in private life. A president cannot obstruct justice when he takes actions that are consistent with his Article II powers under the constitution, which includes firing inferior executive branch officers like Mr. Comey.

Getting uglier by the day out there. I suspect that President Trump’s remarkable success in revitalizing the economy and improving the lives of everyday Americans is what is enraging the Democrats so much. They don’t understand economics, assume that tax cuts have no function beyond enriching the rich, and were quite sure Obama was correct when he said the economy could no longer grow at more than two percent because times had just changed.

ADDENDUM: House Democrats sent more than 80 letters on Monday, demanding documents from family members, business associates, political confidants and others with ties to President Trump, launching a sprawling probe into whether he and his administration have engaged in obstruction of justice, corruption and abuse of power.

Receiving letters from the House Judiciary Committee have included the president’s two eldest sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump; his son-in-law Jared Kushner; his former personal secretary Rhona Graff; Allen Weisselberg, the chief financial officer of the Trump Organization; and former top White House aides Hope Hicks, Sean Spicer and Stephen K. Bannon.

Other demands for documents are directed to institutions including the White House, Justice Department, Trump campaign, Trump transition team and the Trump Organization.

The three chairmen making the demands, Intelligence chairman Adam Schiff, Foreign Affairs chairman Eliot Engel, and Oversight chairman Elijah Cummings. The overseer would seem to be Lavrenty Beria, Stalin’s secret police head who once said “Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime.” (That last was a reminder from Tom Lifson of american thinker)

This is an outrageous fishing expedition. The business of Congress is supposed to be legislation, not the poisonous political pursuit of something, anything, with which to charge the President of the United States because you don’t like him, and are furious that he defeated your candidate, and left you out of power.

Newly-confirmed Attorney General Bill Barr spoke today to the National Association of Attorneys General. He laid out in no uncertain terms the negative effects of a porous border.

Barr preceded his warning by noting the rising number of opioid deaths in the United States, particularly the effects of Chinese fentanyl, which is used by Mexican drug cartels to augment the effects of their heroin supply. “The DEA has stated publicly that the Mexican trans national criminal organizations are the greatest criminal drug threat to the United States,” Barr declared, adding “the DEA tells us that the majority of the heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and fentanyl in this country got here across our southern border.”

This is very big deal indeed, and Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are so intent on trying to bring down the duly elected President of the United States, and refuse to help him in any way – that they are responsible for every drug death in the United States, every rape or murder by an illegal alien, every criminal act, and the drain on taxpayer money from their use of federal welfare benefits, and the cost of schooling for their kids.

Democrats want open borders because the upcoming census (so-far) counts only bodies, not citizens, and the numbers of bodies determines the number of representatives in the U.S. House of Representatives, and who has control. The Senate, according to the Constitution, is made up of two Senators for each state, so that each of the states has equal representation. You have perhaps noticed that Democrats want to change the Constitution so that the Senate also is based on the popular vote.

Perhaps it has something to do with having had a community organizer in charge for 8 years, which gave them the power they crave so deeply. They have always resented and been antagonistic to every Republican president, but this time they seem to have gone fully certifiable.

To hell with the Constitution, the American form of government, and their determination is to find something, anything, to impeach the president for, if they can’t find anything, they will make something up. Is it because he has got the economy booming, full employment, manufacturing growing, millions no longer needing food stamps, and is a president who is clearly a patriot?

Presidents are someone we hire, believing them capable of managing the country for four years, and then, if he or she has done good job, we will give them another four. Presidents are neither Kings nor fairy godmothers to perform magic deeds, they’re supposed to use the powers of the presidency to try to fix what’s wrong, and do the best they can in a complicated world run by fallible human beings afflicted with greed and every character flaw known to mankind. That’s why the Founders only gave them four years at a time – they didn’t want them to settle in and get too comfortable. They wanted it to be a temporary job. We don’t, or shouldn’t, fall in love with presidents.

If you care about national borders, drugs and unneeded drug deaths, sex trafficking, child trafficking, taxpayer funding, you should probably make an effort to let your congressperson know that you do care, and will vote accordingly. Call their local office, or go to their Capitol address at House.gov or Senate.gov where you will find directions on how to contact your representative. They do pay attention to their constituents, because they want to get re-elected. It’s a cushy job.